The men’s Madison 200-laps produced some of the grueling laps inside the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome at the 2024 Paris Games. Portugal’s Luri Leitao and Rui Oliviera emerged victorious with an 8-point win over Italy’s Simone Consonni and Elia Viviani. Defending champions Denmark were ecstatic to send Michael Morkov off into retirement with a bronze medal (Niklas Larsen was his partner).
It’s been an eventful Olympics for Leitao and Portugal’s track program after he won silver in the men’s omnium on Thursday. The men’s Madison was an improbable win for the duo as Leitao was tired from the omnium and Oliviera had never won a top-level race. It was only the 7th time the pair had ever ridden together.
After the race, Oliveira couldn't believe it. "I've no words," he said. "This whole thing is a dream. I don't think I'm living this... I've never won a single race in my life. It was so many disappointments to go through these years and to finally, yeah, if someone told me I would win my first race at the Olympics, I would say you're kidding me."
The Madison usually delivers drama and Saturday was no exception. Austria started with an attack at the start. It was a clear strategic move by Raphael Kokas and Maximillian Schmidbauer, a young cycling pair. The pair would lap the field to receive 20 points, but it was too aggressive and too early. They would tire out and eventually be lapped twice by the field and removed from the race.
The Italians were consistent early on, along with the Netherlands. Both teams consistently placed in the top-5 of sprint laps to earn points. Spain, New Zealand and Belgium were also involved early on in the sprint laps.
After the seventh sprint lap, Italy made their move. Consonni and Viviani attacked and while it took longer than planned, eventually lapped the field after the ninth sprint lap while also claiming points for winning the sprint laps.
At the halfway point of the race, Denmark started to make their move. They won the 10th sprint lap and lapped the field to bring them within eight points of Italy.
Right after the 17th sprint lap, there was a bad crash that took Belgium and Spain out of contention. The two nations had been flirting with the top five for the entire race. Belgium’s team of Lindsay de Vylder and Fabio van den Bossche clipped New Zealand’s Aaron Gate’s back wheel and then took out Spain’s Albert Torres Barcelo as collateral damage.
With 50 laps to go, Portugal made their move to capitalize on tired legs in the field. The duo had only amassed eight points in the first three quarters of the race, they had to lap the field. Before the 18th sprint they attacked the field. The duo would then win the three remaining sprint laps to collect 15 points while also lapping the peloton.
Portugal’s impressive press might not have been enough if it weren’t for Italy’s shocking fall. Consonni and Viviani had a bad handoff on the 179th lap of the race, where Consonni fell to the bottom of the track. Luckily, he missed colliding with anyone else and was eventually able to get back on his bike, but the fall would cost Italy the gold when they looked like they were in total control of their destiny with just 21 laps to go.
Viviani detailed what went through his mind when the crash happened. "Luckily, we didn't both crash, so I could stay in the race, and in that moment, there were also some attacks, but I know I need just to stay hard because he came back, so the lap after (the crash), I just looked at him, and he was down on the floor, and I was a bit worried. But then I saw him on the top again, I thought, 'OK, just keep going, and then he will come back.'"
"We are leading in the Olympics, we can't just give up on the race. It was a tough moment, but we tried until the end really."
The gold medal win was Portugal’s first ever gold in cycling (in any discipline) and third-ever of any kind after Leitao’s omnium silver and a silver in the road race in 2004.
"First medal in the track (for Portugal)... We're not even close to being one of the favorites for this race but we rolled our hearts out and with all my brothers and family here, we pushed to the limits," Oliveira said in disbelief.
Consonni’s silver medal was his second in Paris, after winning bronze in the team pursuit. It was a good Olympic Games for the Consonni family as his sister, Chiara, won gold in the women’s Madison on Friday. Teammate Viviani won his third Olympic medal (gold in Rio and bronze in Tokyo in the men’s omnium).
Viviani had good perspective after the race, "It's the medal I missed, so for sure it's painful to be leading for most of the Madison and then losing in the last few laps, but we gave everything so we can regret nothing, and we are happy with that one for sure."
He made sure to give Portugal credit as well. "Portugal was really fast in the last sprint, and they deserved this win, so congrats to them," he said. "As a champion you always need to, when you lose like that, to really accept it. It's a nice silver. We need to really see it in this way, absolutely."
The Danish duo of Larsen and Morkov added to their impressive Olympic resumes. Morkov announced he was retiring at the end of 2024, and he’ll finish with the bronze from Paris, gold in the men’s Madison from Tokyo and a silver from men’s team pursuit in Beijing. Larsen won his third Olympic medal as well, with a silver in Tokyo and bronze in Rio from the team pursuit.
